


Whosoever Believeth

by astolat



Series: Only Begotten [2]
Category: Damien (TV), Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Antichrist, Apocalypse, F/M, M/M, Wacky Hijinx, mention of past rape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-29
Updated: 2016-04-29
Packaged: 2018-06-05 04:31:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,780
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6689257
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astolat/pseuds/astolat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had been a month since Lucifer had brought Damien Thorn home with him like a stray kitten, and there was no sign he was planning to put him back out on the street anytime soon.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whosoever Believeth

Chloe had hoped that this fascination Lucifer had developed would wear off, but it had been a month since he’d brought Damien Thorn home with him like a stray kitten, and there was no sign he was planning to put him back out on the street anytime soon. She had no idea what to do. She felt pretty strongly she had to do _something_ , but no actual laws were getting broken, and staging an intervention clearly had about as much chance of working on Lucifer as a snowball in, well.

“You know, maybe you should just let the guy live his life,” Dan said.

“He’s shacked up with a _serial killer!_ ”

“The prosecutor withdrew the case, Chloe!” Dan said.

“Because Lucifer cornered her and talked her out of pressing charges!”

Dan just threw up his hands. And yes, fine, the evidence had been beyond shaky, but the sheer number of deaths around Thorn was impossible to explain. Either he _was_ a serial killer or he was the most unlucky person in the history of the universe, in which case hanging out with him probably wasn’t a good idea anyway.

But when she’d tried to persuade Lucifer to leave his new and very much _not_ housebroken pet back in New York where a totally different police force could be responsible for what would presumably be his continuing crime spree, Lucifer only said in an annoyingly patient way, “Darling, he’s my _son._ What would you say if I demanded that you put Trixie out of the house? I’m fairly certain at least _Damien_ won’t leave Legos all over the floor, like tiny caltrops aimed at the innocent.”

“That would not include you, and also _he is not your son!_ ”

“There’s just no talking to you sometimes,” Lucifer had the nerve to say.

So the three of them had all come back to L.A. together, on a private corporate jet that Lucifer had somehow talked someone at the Armitage Corporation into letting them borrow. How, she decided she didn’t want to know. Damien had said goodbye to his pals, so at least _they_ would get to keep living—not that they seemed happy about it—and he and Lucifer had spent the entire flight having loud athletic sex in the back while Chloe put on her headphones and blasted her “cleaning the house after putting it off for a month” playlist.

Lucifer had staggered out somewhere over Kansas for a short break, thankfully wearing a robe, although it wasn’t tied all that effectively. “Would there be anything to drink?” he asked blurrily, and then beamed at the flight attendant, who popped up and showed him the bar.

“Lucifer, oh my god, are you _okay?_ ” Chloe said, staring. His lip was split and he had bruises all along his cheekbone and there were deep red scratches across his chest, but it was even more than that; he looked _wrecked_ , almost shaky. She’d seen him down three bottles of whiskey and fuck ten people without so much as turning a hair; five day benders didn’t make him break a sweat.

“That,” he said solemnly, “is an _excellent_ question.” He took the glass the attendant handed him, tipped it back in a single gulp, and handed it right back for a refill. “To be perfectly frank, I’m feeling a bit _spent_.” He sank down on the couch with a deep sigh and let his head sink back, eyes closing, and actually fell asleep right there sitting up. He didn’t even move enough to spill his drink.

Damien came out an hour later. Chloe had picked up a canister of pepper spray before getting on board, just in case; she made sure it was in convenient reach in her pocket. It wasn’t a giant mystery about why Lucifer had gone for the psycho killer, aside from the whole Antichrist line: Damien seemed to get prettier every time she saw him, including since they’d boarded, like Lucifer was putting a fresh coat of paint on the guy every time he banged him. The flight attendant didn’t even offer him a drink because she was too busy gazing at him with open-mouthed appreciation.

“Hey, could I get some lunch?” he asked her, and she breathed out, “ _Anything_ , Damien,” in longing tones, practically inviting him to sign her up as victim #43 or whatever the count was up to. His mouth twisted. “Just lunch,” he said, and she nodded earnestly and vanished into the back.

He sank down on the couch next to Lucifer with a deep sigh and then noticed her. _He_ at least had something resembling the decency to look embarrassed. “Uh, sorry if…” he said, darting a look back towards the bedroom.

“If I overheard you and _your dad_ fucking your brains out?” Chloe said sweetly.

He huffed out a short laugh. “Yeah, well, I guess my life isn’t allowed to stop being disturbing.”

“I guess _not_ ,” Chloe said.

Then his lunch appeared: ribeye steak, served bloody-rare. Damien ate it like he hadn’t seen food in a month. Lucifer woke up, tossed back his drink, and demanded his own steak. He also looked the flight attendant over—she was still gazing wistfully at Damien—and when he finished eating he said, “Do you want to join us, sweetheart?”

“Oh my God yes,” she said.

Lucifer looked at _her,_ too, and raised his eyebrows, somehow managing to invite her and also mock her for saying no at the _same time_ , and when she glared back he just sighed and shook his head. They all trotted off into the back together, while Chloe covered her face and pretended she was on a different plane. Of existence, preferably.

She pinned her few remaining hopes on Maze putting up a fight about being displaced in Lucifer’s creepy sex friend hierarchy, but that was about the opposite of what happened. They walked back into Lux with Lucifer calling, “Maze, darling? There’s someone I want you to meet.”

“Mommy!” Trixie yelled, hopping off a barstool and running over happily—wearing a skintight leather outfit with an _actual sharpened dagger in her hand_ , why in God’s name had Chloe ever thought leaving her with Maze was a good idea? Right, because Dan was working, her mom was out of town, and Lucifer had gone running out of the police station like a bat out of hell saying _if I don’t come back_ like he was on a mission to save the world, when what he’d actually meant was, _if my new boyfriend murders me during our pseudo-incestuous sexcapades._ “Maze is teaching me how to be a _ninja,_ ” Trixie was saying. “Hi, Lucifer! Who is that?”

“Yes, hello, annoying human spawn,” Lucifer said. “This is Damien. He’s _my_ son,” and then he gave Chloe a _smug_ look straight from one of the obnoxious PTA moms on the fucking playground, _my kid is better than yours_. Chloe stared at him in total indignation. At least _her_ kid wasn’t a _serial killer_ —and what the fuck was she even thinking, if she spent any more time around Lucifer she’d go as completely insane as he was.

“Maze went upstairs to get some better knives,” Trixie said. “She promised if I hit the target three times in a row with the steel dagger she’d let me try one of her _demon-forged blades_.” She beamed.

“Well, isn’t that nice for you,” Lucifer said condescendingly.

“Hi Damien,” Trixie said, turning to the serial killer. “I’m Trixie. You’re really old to be a kid, aren’t you?”

Damien actually laughed and crouched down. Chloe glared at him warningly, but he just said, “Hi, Trixie. I guess I am.”

Trixie frowned a little up at Lucifer. “Hey, doesn’t that mean _you_ have to be really old?” Thereby showing a better grasp on reality than more than half the adults in the room, which would have made Chloe more happy if that had been a higher bar.

“I’m as old as the cosmos, infant. I’m the one who started it going, after all,” Lucifer said, going behind the bar to pour drinks. “‘Let there be light,’ and all that. Ah, Maze, there you are,” and Chloe turned and threw her an urgent _be with me on this_ look, except Maze had already stopped on the steps and was staring at Damien with an expression like Christmas had come early.

She looked at Lucifer, who got a horrible half-shy _teary_ smile, like he was so happy and proud he couldn’t _stand_ it, and said softly, in a completely serious voice, “Behold, Mazikeen, this is my son.”

And then Maze came down the stairs right up to Damien and took his hand and _kissed_ it, bending her knee as she did, and when she straightened up again she said, “Hail, son of the morning,” while Lucifer beamed on them both.

#

After a few weeks of the new nightmarish normal, Chloe tried approaching Lucifer’s therapist, but Dr. Martin just sighed. “Detective, I’m afraid the only thing I can tell you legally is that Lucifer has informed me that Damien _has_ in fact killed two people. However, as the two people were his ex-girlfriend, who drowned in a freak sinkhole outside his apartment, and a Mr. Troy Hendrie, who suffered an escalator accident in the subway, I didn’t consider it necessary to report Lucifer’s testimony to the police.”

“Well, great, that’s even more insane,” Chloe said. “Can’t you get him to recognize that Damien _can’t_ be his son?”

Dr. Martin smiled a little. “I understand your concern. But actually, Damien and Lucifer are using their compatible delusions to facilitate giving each other a level of love and emotional support and intimacy that they have both previously been denied.” She flipped her hands back and forth, one to the other. “By stepping into the vacancy Damien’s father left, Lucifer is healing his own sense of abandonment. By entering the role of a loving son, Damien is overwriting the childhood trauma where he was blamed for the destruction of his own family. Yes, they are using a delusional narrative as their basis. But the relationship is real and for that matter, healthy.”

“They’re _sleeping together,”_ Chloe said.

“Yes, well,” Dr. Martin said, just a bit uncertainly. “They aren’t actually related _biologically_.”

That led to Chloe’s last-ditch effort. She went to the penthouse and found Lucifer stretched out half-naked on the couch reading. Damien was sitting on the floor in just a pair of jeans with his back leaning against the couch, laptop on the coffee table. Lucifer’s hand was absently curled around his neck, thumb stroking up and down, in a deeply kinky parody of happy father-son togetherness. They hadn’t even left the apartment in the last two weeks, as far as she could tell.  She glared at Damien some more. She was almost starting to wish he _would_ try to murder Lucifer.

“I need a blood sample from each of you,” she announced.

“Mm, let me think about that,” Lucifer said without even looking up from his _L’Uomo_ _Vogue_. “No, definitely not.”

“Why not?”

“D’you know what some loony would-be sorcerer would pay for an ounce out of my veins?” Lucifer said. “Or Damien’s? And what they’d _do_ with it? Bad things happen when mortals and the divine mix, Detective.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine. A cheek swab, then.”

Damien looked up at her. “I don’t get it, why are you doing this to yourself?”

“What?”

“If you wanted to believe, you already would,” Damien said. “And why would you? I wouldn’t want to believe any of this shit if I wasn’t _in_ it.” Lucifer stroked his his cheek, comfortingly, and Damien turned his face into Lucifer’s hand and kissed it. He looked back at her. “Why are you forcing it? If you prove that Lucifer is my father, if you find some weird angelic marker in our DNA, what is that going to mean to you?”

She stared at him. “Well, I guess I’ll just have to figure that out when it happens.”

“Actually, do you know, that’s an _excellent_ argument,” Lucifer said, giving Damien’s shoulder a thump with his rolled up magazine. “I really can’t take any more of this. Hand over the swabs.”

Damien sighed, but he did the cheek swab anyway when Lucifer handed it to him.

The DNA testing lab promptly developed a backlog. After a week where nobody in the entire department got any results back at all, Chloe finally went down to the lab in person and found the techs all arguing over who got to look through the microscope next.

“The _cells_. They’re so _beautiful,_ ” Mike Kozlowski said tearfully to her. He was a sixteen-year grizzled veteran who tore people’s hides off if they dared to ask for their results a day ahead of schedule and didn’t _care_ what the rush was. “Do…do you think…you could get another sample?”

“Do you think you could _get me the results?_ ” Chloe said pointedly.

He heaved an enormous sigh. “Yeah, yeah, the other sample is the father. Matching Y chromosomes.”

“Oh,” Chloe said, blankly.

“They’re also closely related on  the maternal side,” he added.

“Um?”

“Same mitochondrial DNA. The same _perfect_ mitochondrial DNA…” His voice trailed off, dreamy.

“Um,” Chloe said again. “ _What?_ ”

“Well, there’s two kinds of mitochondrial DNA in the child sample, actually,” he said. “But the other stuff isn’t anything special.”

“What does that even _mean_?” Chloe said desperately.

He frowned faintly, as if maybe he was noticing there was something weird about what he was saying. “Maybe the father’s mitochondria didn’t die after fertilization? That would make sense. Nothing can kill them, anyway.”

“Kill what?” Chloe said.

“The cells,” Kozlowski said. “They won’t die. They’re too perfect to die…”

She grabbed back all the samples—she had to wrestle Damien’s away from several of the techs, to the point she almost had to pull her _gun_ —and marched out with their plaintive cries behind her. She put them into a garbage bag and inside a cardboard box before she threw them into the dumpster behind the department, and then she drove furiously off to Lux and stalked right into the apartment, only to get halted because neither of them was anywhere to be seen: the shower was running.

She stood seething outside the bathroom door, her hands clenched, and then she banged in. Lucifer was braced against the wall of the walk-in shower getting fucked, his eyes ecstatically shut, one hand sliding leisurely over his own incredibly large—

He and Damien both jerked and stared over at her. “Detective, what a surprise,” Lucifer said, strangled. “Was there something you wanted?”

“You’re _actually_ the Devil!” she yelled at him.

“Oh, boy,” Damien muttered.

“ _Yes_ , darling, so I’ve said!” Lucifer said. “ _Repeatedly_.”

“You’re his _father!_ ” she said. “And—and possibly also his _mother_!”

Lucifer groaned and put his head against his arm on the wall. “Could this wait until _after_ I’ve had this orgasm?”

#

Of course it couldn’t. Lucifer was grudgingly prepared to admit he adored Chloe quite beyond reason, which was just as well for her, since she regularly insisted on being _completely unreasonable._ Just because she’d discovered he’d been telling her the _truth_ all along was no excuse for interrupting a perfectly marvelous and as it happened urgently necessary shag. Especially not for _existential angst._

“But,” Chloe said.

“Don’t,” Lucifer interrupted firmly. He wasn’t going down that road with a human ever again. He’d tried, and it wasn’t pretty.

“What?”

“Yes, the dinosaurs were real, yes, there’s billions of galaxies. Don’t ask questions that can’t be answered,” Lucifer said. “The universe _is_ the answer. It can’t be explained from inside.”

“That makes absolutely no sense,” Chloe said.

“Don’t complain to me, it’s not as though it was _my_ idea,” Lucifer said. He was beginning to regret he’d given her the samples after all.

Damien was sitting on the couch with him, silently radiating _I told you so_. Chloe turned and stared at him. “You’re really—”

“Looks that way,” Damien said, with a stiff, unhappy smile. Lucifer looked away. He’d been doing his very best, but there wasn’t any denying things weren’t going well. The last time Damien had ventured as far out as downstairs to Lux, two weeks ago, there’d nearly been a riot. Maze had been forced to knock people down, covering his retreat, and after he’d gotten away, Lucifer had played the piano nonstop the entire night instead of his usual handful of songs, just to keep the faint echoes of Damien’s presence from taking hold in the crowd. Even so, there were a dozen or so people who kept coming every night, since, and their numbers were starting to grow. They sat at the tables watching the elevator, or him, or Maze, as if they felt Damien even at second-hand.

Turned out Damien’s misery had been the strongest leash on his powers, and now that was gone, he hadn’t any idea how to control them, just as they were spiraling out of hand. Sadly, neither did Lucifer. He didn’t have to work at controlling his own. They were simply a part of him. It had to be the human bits getting in the way: the poor creatures had to learn literally everything for themselves, even how to eat and walk, and Damien had been forced to go through all of those hideous developmental stages, so evidently this one was on the list, too.

Dr. Martin had suggested that perhaps practice might work. But Damien’s powers were meant to be thrown at entire nations, not individuals, and at this point, he couldn’t use them at all without fairly distracting consequences. Even Lucifer couldn’t resist for very long—well, he didn’t much _want_ to resist, which didn’t help—and while that was highly recreational, it didn’t seem to be providing much in the way of exercise. But anyone else they brought in simply got bowled-over into catatonia. Even _Maze_ fell into a haze of blank adoration if she wasn’t watching out for it the whole time—

“Wait a minute,” he said suddenly, whipping round to stare at Chloe, who stared back. “ _You_ don’t.”

“I don’t _what?_ ” Chloe said warily.

“You don’t fall down in worship of him!” Lucifer said, jerking his head towards Damien.

“If this is the lead-in to a threesome, you can forget it,” Chloe said.

“No!” Lucifer said. “Well, yes, quite possibly, but that’s _incidental._ ”

“It’s really _not._ ”

“His powers don’t work on you at _all_ , do they,” Lucifer said. “You don’t even _like_ him. You’ve been around him for weeks now, and you’ve been trying to get me to chuck him out the door the entire time.”

Chloe flushed and looked embarrassed for some reason. “I—I thought he was going to _kill_ you!” she said, darting a look at Damien.

Lucifer waved it away impatiently. “The point is, I’ve really _pushed_ you and nothing. If it’s the same, if his powers simply don’t touch you at all, he can just fire away at you.” He frowned. “I still don’t understand how that’s possible. Are you secretly madly religious?” Then a really horrible thought struck him. “You’re not _enlightened_ , are you? I swear if you’re one of those slippery bastards trying to _ditch_ the rest of us—”

“I am not enlightened!” Chloe said. “And if—wait, how does that even—”

“No!” Lucifer snapped. “We are _not_ discussing comparative religion!”

Chloe did agree to help eventually, although not after anything _he_ said: Damien had to say, “Lucifer’s trying to help me get the power under control. That’s _why_ we’re fucking five times a day. If I don’t bleed off enough of it, people start—” He swallowed. “They start doing their best to make me _notice_ them, do you get it? I _didn’t_ murder all those people. I didn’t do shit to them. They walked up to me and killed themselves just to prove they _loved_ me.”

Chloe looked horrified, as though that wasn’t an obvious move. “You _do_ realize it’s perfectly sensible, from their perspective,” Lucifer said. They both stared at him. “They’re sending themselves straight to Hell to join your legions, and making sure you take notice of them. They’re hoping for promotion.”

“They think I’m going to _promote_ them for killing themselves?” Damien looked rather ill.

“For the demonstration of loyalty, of course,” Lucifer said. “I’m not advising you to pal around with them or anything. Someone who decides Hell is a better time than here isn’t anyone you’d want to have a drink with. But they’ll make good shock troops.”

“For an attack on Heaven,” Chloe said flatly.

“Yes, exactly,” Lucifer said.

She promptly shoved her head into a sofa cushion and muffled a yell, for absolutely no reason whatsoever. But she did agree to help, afterwards, although she still refused to have sex with them for her usual unfathomable reasons.

“Yes, yes, all right, if you’re overwhelmed and suddenly fling yourself at him I’ll restrain you,” Lucifer said with a sigh. But it turned out restraint wasn’t necessary: Damien could unleash his full strength on her without having the slightest effect. On her, anyway: it rather maddened _him_. After several hours trying with increasing intensity to make her yield to love for him, he was nearly glowing with power, and when Chloe still shrugged helplessly and said, “I’m not getting anything,” he suddenly gasped and collapsed on the couch, exhausted and indignant, and then he blinked.

He looked at Lucifer. “I— _got_ it, just then. I was— _pushing_ it.”

“Yes, I would think so,” Lucifer said, a bit strangled. _He_ wasn’t unaffected, and he also didn’t have any bizarre objections to amazing sex, so it had been its own form of interesting torment, hanging about watching. He eyed Chloe dubiously. “I don’t understand _you_ , though. It’s like you’re just dead inside or something.” She glared at him. “Wait, _are_ you?” He sat up abruptly.

“Dead inside?” she snapped.

“ _Death_ inside, actually,” Lucifer said. “Or one of the others—Delirium? No, you’re too coherent. You can’t be Dream. Oh, please tell me you’re not Dream.”

“What are you even _talking_ about,” she said, to his intense relief: this was just the sort of joke that convoluted bastard would have gone in for.

“But if you’re not an angel, and you’re not one of the Endless, I haven’t the faintest fucking idea what you are,” he said.

“I’m just a _person,_ ” she said.

“Bollocks,” he said. “ _People_ can’t resist him. Or me, for that matter.”

He tabled the issue for the moment, however, in the interests of pragmatism. After four more days of pushing at Chloe, Damien finally got control over what _he_ was doing, more or less, and that evening they ventured cautiously downstairs for a drink at the bar, at 5pm when Lux was only theoretically open and only a scattering of people were around. They didn’t have to go upstairs again until nearly nine, and then only because Damien was tired of holding it all in. Lucifer snagged a bottle of champagne from the bar as they left, and upstairs he pulled out the cork and they toasted, celebratory.

“I was starting to think I was never going to leave the house again,” Damien said, throwing back the first glass.

Lucifer had started to think he was going to have to take Damien to Hell, with an indefinite end point to the duration of his stay, which felt hideously almost like _sentencing his child to Hell_ , even if Damien would have been hailed as a prince and lord, all the host bending the knee. He took an enormous swallow of champagne and gratitude and kissed Chloe’s cheek, and told he didn’t care in the least who she was or what she was. “Even if you _are_ Morpheus,” he added, in a burst of magnanimity.

She rolled her eyes. “So does this mean I might even see you on another case at some point?”

“Why, Detective, you _missed_ me.” She scowled a bit, but she didn’t even _deny_ it. “Certainly,” he said, basking in victory. The stars seemed to be aligned in his direction, so he even asked, “Are you _sure_ you wouldn’t like to spend the night? Having sex, I mean, not the boring version where you just snooze loudly.”

“Ugh, you can’t be a normal person for _five seconds_ ,” Chloe said.

#

That was an odd thing to say—of course he couldn’t—but he didn’t quite understand how odd until he realized, a few weeks later, that Chloe had half-forgotten he was really the Devil, in some peculiar way. If he _pressed_ her on the subject, she grudgingly admitted his identity, but otherwise she behaved exactly as though she still thought he was just a garden-variety lunatic.

Damien shrugged. “I don’t think a human being can really wrap their heads around the idea. It’s easier not to look at it.”

“Chloe’s not in _denial!_ ” Lucifer said, obscurely annoyed by the suggestion, even though she did _seem_ to be.

“Um,” Linda said, when he explained the problem. “Well—”

“Look, forget about whether _you_ believe it, _she_ believes it, all right?” he said, irritably. “Only she’s _in denial_ about it, or at least she’s acting as though she is.”

“Lucifer, I really don’t think Chloe would be in denial about _your_ identity,” which was exactly his point, but then why was she _behaving_ as though she was? “When someone’s in denial about something, it’s because it’s something emotionally significant to _them_ ,” Linda said. “She would only be in denial about something that had happened to _her_ , or her _own_ identity, or—”

“I see!” Lucifer said.

“Yes?” Linda said.

“Yes, of course,” Lucifer said. “She’s in denial about whatever _she_ is.” He kissed Linda’s cheek and dashed off to start doing some research.

He’d already seen Chloe shot once, so she clearly wasn’t immortal. That left any number of eldritch creatures. He demanded she give him a sample of _her_ DNA, only she said, “Uh, okay, but,” and it turned out her DNA had already been scanned and filed six ways from Sunday, so that if any of her genetic matter turned up at a crime scene she was working, the techs could filter it out.

“Also, Dan and I got tested when—when I was pregnant,” she said stiffly.

“Hmm, interesting,” Lucifer said. That narrowed the field considerably. But she wasn’t one of the Lilim, wasn’t an animated corpse, wasn’t a witch, and he was almost certain she wasn’t a fallen goddess.

“All right, look, you really have to have sex with me,” Lucifer said finally, after another week of racking his brains had limited the possibilities to half a dozen entities, any of which couldn’t hide their nature during congress, or at least in the moment of climax—which also neatly explained _why_ Chloe kept refusing to have the infernal ride of her life.

“I really don’t,” Chloe said.

“Then just face up to it and _tell me!_ What are you even afraid of? It’s not as though you’re going to top _I’m the Devil_ on the scale of awkward relationship confessions.”

“First of all, we’re not in a relationship!” Chloe said, infuriatingly, “and second of all, there’s _nothing to tell!_ I’m _normal!_ ”

“Then come on and fuck me already! If you _were_ normal, you would have by now.”

“I can’t imagine what about this pass isn’t turning me on,” Chloe said.

“It can’t take _that_ much, you’ve fucked _Dan_ at least once,” Lucifer said. “Unless you were drunk?”

“We were _married!_ ” Chloe said. “ _M-A-R-R-I-E-D._ ”

He paused and stared at her in real horror. “Are you telling me you _saved yourself_ for _Detective Douche?_ ”

She flushed and said stiffly, “That’s not what I meant, and—and it’s none of your goddamn business, and if I _had_ —”

“You’ve wasted your entire sexual life so far on _Dan?_ ” He seized her by the shoulders. “You’re going to _die_ , woman, do you understand? You’ve got—seventy years left, at _best,_ ” which made some part of him quiver with horror when he thought about it, which only made him all the more furious that she’d pushed him to that point. “Don’t you realize it’s all bullshit anyway? The Great Bastard up there just wants you to spend all your time thinking about _Him_ , that’s all. If you’re not doing that, you might as _well_ shag yourself senseless, you don’t win a prize for it or anything.”

Chloe shoved him back with both hands against his chest. “Oh my God, will you shut up!” she yelled at him. “Dan is ten times the human being you are—”

“He’s _infinitely_ more the human being than I am,” he interjected. “That’s hardly a marker of his desirability.”

“—and he has done more for me and for—oh, I can’t _believe_ I even let you get me into this conversation!” She whirled and slammed back into the drug store where their latest boring victim had just got himself strangled to death with dental floss.

#

“I can’t believe she’s only ever fucked _Dan_ and won’t _me_ ,” Lucifer said. “There must be some way to make her see it’s just a failure of _logic_.”

“Uh huh,” Damien said drowsily.

Lucifer glared down at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

He couldn’t quite muster the indignation that Damien’s tone really ought to have commanded. Damien was sprawled across him, head pillowed on his chest, gone completely limp and relaxed under his stroking fingers. The two girls were curled up fast asleep on either side of them, and that delicious new dancer Maze had recruited last week was stretched across the foot of the bed, all of them smiling in their sleep with perfectly ordinary satiation and not a trace of crazed zealotry.

Damien yawned and rolled over onto his back, nudging one of the sleeping girls over a bit. She cuddled up to him and he absently put an arm around her. “She left her daughter with what she thought was a psychotic bartender and flew across the country when she thought you were in trouble.”

“Yes?” Lucifer said.

“I’ve fucked up every relationship I’ve ever had, so I can’t really say this for sure, but I think she’s pretty sold.”

“She’s _not_ sold, I’ve asked her on eighty-four separate occasions,” Lucifer said. “If I count that time on the plane, which barely merits mention.”

“I’m just saying I don’t think you have to talk her into _wanting_ you. She might just want more than she thinks you’re offering.”

“How much could she want?” Lucifer demanded. “I’ve given total fucking strangers their heart’s desires just to advance her trivial little cases, what’s she going to ask me for?”

“Monogamy?” Damien suggested.

“Why wouldn’t I give her monogamy?” Lucifer said baffled. “Obviously if _you_ needed me urgently or something, I’d have to make an exception,” he stroked Damien’s head, “but what’s a human lifetime? It’s not like I haven’t had plenty of the opposite.” He considered the idea. “It sounds an interesting challenge, actually. Although she’d probably get tired out at _some_ point.”

“Marriage?”

“Why not? As long as it’s a civil ceremony,” Lucifer said. “I’m not making any promises in _His_ fucking sight.”

“Maybe you should let her know all that, then.”

“Oh, a _proposal!_ ” Lucifer said, sitting up. 

“Uh,” Damien said. “I guess.”

#

“I hate you more than words can possibly express,” Chloe said, and threw the ring in his face. It was lucky he had angelic reflexes, since the stone would certainly have done some damage otherwise. She whirled and stalked out of the ballroom. The cheering and the musicians both trailed off a bit uncertainly. The three dozen dancers and acrobats held their poses for a few moments longer before they started to shuffle about.

“What does the woman _want_ of me?” he demanded of Linda the next day. “I flew out the fucking _London Symphony Orchestra!_ I hired _Cirque du Soleil!_ ”

“Yes, I, um, saw it on YouTube,” she said, in an oddly stifled way. “Lucifer, not—not everyone appreciates—being put on the spot.”

He threw up his hands.

Chloe flat-out refused to speak to him for days afterwards, and relented only because Trixie’s birthday was on the horizon, and the little monster wanted him to come to whatever ghastly juvenile festivities were planned. Even more ghastly, he had to _go_. “She wants Damien, too,” Chloe added shortly. “ _If_ you think you could stand to avoid making out with him for the duration of the party.”

“Are you _still_ on about the incest thing?” Lucifer said despairingly.

“ _No_ , actually, at this point I’ve just fallen back to the _not having sex in front of eight year olds_ thing!”

Damien laughed— _laughed_ , aloud, from real happiness, a sound that drove lingering echoes of celestial choirs out of Lucifer’s head. “ _I_ promise, how’s that,” he said to Chloe, while Lucifer struggled not to make a spectacle of himself, so that Saturday they drove over together and Lucifer appallingly found himself at a park with _pony rides_ , and a clown so hideously made up he could have passed for a demon straight out of Gehenna without even trying.

“Well, I’m sorry, I didn’t _mean_ to run him off,” Lucifer protested, after the clown fled screaming—all because he’d mentioned as much, and suggested he try the getup when he went to his inevitable final rest. All right, Lucifer’s real eyes might have peeked out a bit, but it wasn’t really his fault. The man had tried to offer him a _balloon crown_.

“You just ruined Trixie’s birthday!” Chloe hissed.

“The absence of that grotesque cannot _possibly_ have made her day worse,” Lucifer said. “I refuse to believe her taste is _that_ atrocious.”

“Mommy, where’s the clown?” Trixie asked, popping up fresh from her fourth go on the ponies. “I want a balloon rose.”

Chloe glared murder at him. Lucifer turned round and clapped his hands. “Right, Trixie, the clown’s had to go. What d’you fancy instead? Swimming or Disneyland?”

Trixie stared up at him with enormous eyes.

“Okay, you are _so_ missing the point,” Chloe said. “And we are not—”

“Swimming _at_ Disneyland?” Trixie interrupted hopefully.

“Girl after my own heart,” he said, and called a stretch Hummer to carry her and her dozen squealing compatriots. “Shall I give you a lift?” he asked Chloe, surreptitiously assisting the last giggling little monster aboard with a shove. Damien had already submitted to being dragged in with them, but Hell was never getting cold enough for _him_ to climb in. “They can’t get into _too_ much trouble unsupervised on the way, all the bottles in the bar are miniature.”

“It’s a good thing you’re immortal, because I’m going to _kill you_ ,” Chloe said. “I’m going with the girls. You can give _Dan_ a ride instead.”

“That’s just cruel,” Lucifer said, but Chloe had already climbed in and slammed the door in his face, and she would certainly have kicked up a fuss if he ditched the father of her offspring on said offspring’s birthday, so he ungraciously said, “Right, come along, try not to get any of _you_ on the upholstery,” to the douche. Dan scowled at him.

 Dan sat like an unpleasant, faintly stale-smelling lump for the first half hour of the drive, then grudgingly said, “So you’re seeing this guy Damien, huh?”

“I’m not _seeing_ him, he’s my _son_ ,” Lucifer said. “And if _you’ve_ got any clever remarks about incest in mind, go ahead and make them, and I’ll chuck you straight out onto the freeway.”

“Uh, no, I,” Dan said feebly, taking the better part of valor, and went straight back to being his _silent, dull, lumpish self_.

Lucifer ground his teeth and burst out, “Look, how’d you even _do_ it?” Dan stared at him. “How did you ever talk Chloe into marrying you? Much less _spawning_ with you—I really can’t believe you actually helped to produce Trixie.”

“Wow, fuck you,” Dan said.

“Not interested,” Lucifer said, although dear God, what if a threesome were _the_ _only way_? He shuddered. “Seriously, what did you do? Did you catch her at a weak moment? Her father had just died, hadn’t he?”

“You are a piece of work, you know that?” Dan said.

“I do, actually,” Lucifer said. “What I _don’t_ know is why Chloe ever consented to let you father her offspring—”

“Just _shut up!_ Shut the _fuck_ up!” Dan all but snarled at him, so savagely Lucifer blinked over at him in surprise.

“My, the mouse does turn. Where did _that_ come from?”

“You just—” Dan turned away, his mouth tight, his jaw clenched. “You don’t understand a goddamn thing.”

 “So _tell me already!_ ” Dan didn’t say anything at all, but his face was crumbling like stale coffee cake, sad and doughy, unhappiness trembling in the corner of his mouth. “You’re _not_ her father,” Lucifer said blankly.

Dan’s head whipped round. “Like _hell_ I’m not.”

“But Chloe _was_ waiting for marriage, so—”

“Fuck off, you think I’m telling you anything?” Dan said. “You go ahead and ask _her_.”

“All right, I will.”

“No! Jesus, you—” Dan cut himself off, ran his hand over his mouth. “You _would_ , wouldn’t you. Of course you would. Fine, you asshole, I’ll tell you, but you don’t get to say a fucking word about it to her, or Trixie, ever. How’s _that_ for a deal?”

“Well, I can’t promise _that_. What if you tell me she’s a Lixariun demiurge and she actually spawned Trixie by budding?”

“She was _raped_ , you son of a bitch,” Dan said, and Lucifer swerved the car across six lanes of traffic onto the shoulder and grabbed him by the collar and roared into his face, “ _Who dared?_ ”

Dan’s face had blanched utterly white, his eyes stricken. His mouth moved, soundless, and finally he croaked out, “don’t know,” in a tiny, dry, cracking voice.

 Lucifer let go of him and faced forward, gripping the steering wheel with both hands. He wanted to burst the bonds of his flesh and go searing across Los Angeles like a blazing star of retribution; if only he’d had a destination. “What do you mean, you _don’t know_.”

Dan was shivering horribly. “ _Chloe_ doesn’t know,” he whispered. “She doesn’t—she doesn’t remember. She just—she found out when her doctor told her she was pregnant.”

“What?” Lucifer said, and the first cold touch slid along his spine.

“We were dating. We’d—we’d made out a few times. We thought maybe some kind of freak accident—but we checked, and I’m not—and there was no one else. There wasn’t anybody else. She wasn’t lying,” Dan said with a burst of defiance, head raised, though his voice kept trembling.

“No,” Lucifer said, gone as dry and cracked as Dan had been himself. “No, she wasn’t lying,” and of all the nearly infinite possibilities and horrors he’d considered, this hadn’t been one of them.

He started the car again after a moment and drove the rest of the way mechanically. Dan huddled in the passenger seat, shivering, and didn’t speak again. At the hotel, the Hummer had arrived before them. Trixie was already in a swimsuit fresh from the gift shop, laughing with her friends, going around in an infinite loop from the waterslide into the pool and back to the steps to climb up again before sailing down, her arms stretched out like wings, her whole tiny face shining with joy, and Chloe was watching her, arms folded and smiling, anger smoothed out by love.

Of course his powers didn’t work on her. Of course Damien couldn’t command her love. Her heart wasn’t set on a mortal object; her heart was filled with the grace of the Christ-child come again. Nothing else supernatural could force its way in, not with that eternal power rising like a sun out of her life.  

Damien was standing with Chloe in the shallow end of the pool, gilded with sunlight, smiling also as he watched the laughing children, half-uncertainly, as though he couldn’t quite believe nothing hideous was happening around him. His son, who’d been midwifed by murderers, whose childhood had been spent in isolation and ugliness, taught over and over that the only comforts there would ever be for him were the material. God hadn’t protected _his_ mother from his divinity, made his radiance gentle enough to bear; God hadn’t sheltered _his_ adoptive parents.

Of course, neither had Lucifer; he’d drugged and fucked away the decades, amusing himself and leaving his son to suffer alone, and now he’d even gone and—fallen in love with the mother of his _destroyer_ —

He turned blindly and hid himself away in a bare concrete corner outside the men’s room and turned his face to the wall and pressed it against his fist, shuddering. The world felt thin and roaring around him, the howling shriek of dying stars louder in his ears than the gleeful children and the tinny love songs being pumped out by the speakers, all of it like a grotesque joke someone— _his father_ —was playing on him, laughing somewhere in a high room above it all—

“Hey,” Damien said, his hands closing on Lucifer’s arms, full of nothing but love and worry, because he couldn’t even be _angry_ ; he hadn’t enough to let himself be angry at the father who’d done nothing for him his entire life, who’d only shown up in the end to slaughter him like an arm of the same merciless God. _Fuck_ , Lucifer realized, he’d gone _for_ Chloe, and Trixie; he’d left Mazikeen protecting them and he’d gone to put the knife to Damien’s throat _for their sake_ —

 He put his hand over his mouth, sickened. Damien turned him. “Lucifer,” he said. “ _Father_ ,” and drew him close, and Lucifer pressed his face to Damien’s temple. He couldn’t turn away, even though Damien deserved better; he was all the boy had, as appalling as that was.

“I swear to _God_ , one fucking time, that’s all I asked for,” Chloe said, storming around the corner after them full of righteous indignation, as bright and avenging as ever Michael had been, and stopped short, falling silent, as Lucifer wept with his son in his arms.

#

Damien almost felt relieved, in a weird way. The other shoe had dropped, only a little behind schedule. He’d known that he didn’t get to have this; that he didn’t get to love someone without fucking up their lives. The new thing was Lucifer understood what was happening to him and exactly how fucked he was going to be: on a truly cosmic level.

Damien got him out of the party and back to Lux. Maze, looking almost panicked, slapped him hard and then offered him heroin. “No,” Lucifer said, and then quietly, “thank you, Mazikeen,” and kissed her cheek, gently, and then he went upstairs to stand on the balcony in total and inhuman stillness, watching the sun sink down over the city and the lights come out. Damien sat down on the couch inside, feeling dull and strange. Lucifer wouldn’t ever send him away, but he could go. He’d got it under control now. Maybe if he buried himself in some deep part of the world.

It was dark outside when Lucifer came back inside and laid a hand on his head. It felt strange, _heavy_ , like something more than human flesh and bone was inside it, and when he spoke, the words clanged against Damien’s skull like bells. “I can slay the child,” he said, formal and remote and terrible. “The daggers of Megiddo can be used against her as they can against you.”

Damien reached up and caught Lucifer’s hand and pressed his face against it. There was a strange scorching heat near the surface of the skin. He understood the real offer. Lucifer would’ve gutted himself, _made_ himself evil—made himself the monster who _deserved_ everything that God had done to him and planned to do to him. Just to try and protect Damien, even though he knew it wouldn’t work. Damien kissed his palm and said softly, “No,” and Lucifer dragged in a harsh breath and sank down limply, the terrible fire going out of him, leaving him grey as ash.

“You know, I think I will take that heroin, now,” he said dully. Damien got the kit. They shot up together and collapsed on the bed side by side.

In the morning, Lucifer said, “You know, there’s no need to linger in Los Angeles. I haven’t been to Buenos Aires in ages. Or Peru! We could just drive down through Mexico, it’ll be a lovely trip this time of year,” like he’d just noticed a ticking clock that wasn’t going to take anything like a hundred trillion years to run down. “There’s so much to see—” and then he broke off, and Damien knew he was thinking about the other things they’d see: corruption and violence, murder and rape, everything that Damien already knew on some level he had the power to _fix_ ; he could bring peace and save the world with ten armies and a flaming sword of his own.

And then he’d probably turn into some kind of crazy tyrant emperor and Beatrice Decker would grow up to overthrow him and between them they’d drown eight billion people and mostly destroy the world, for the greater glory of God and all that bullshit.

“L.A. is good,” Damien said. “I like the weather.”

Lucifer nodded after a moment and got up.

#

Chloe told herself she was just _angry_ , that was all; Lucifer had completely ruined Trixie’s party—okay, granted, partly by replacing it with a new one so awesome nothing was ever going to match it again—and then he’d flipped out with no explanation and run off without so much as wishing Trixie happy birthday. Not to mention he’d somehow completely traumatized poor Dan, who still wouldn’t even tell her what had happened during the drive. So even though she’d vowed that she was never speaking to him again after that bullshit stunt proposal he’d probably done for publicity, she was going to go over to Lux and give him a richly deserved piece of her mind, and—and if anything else was wrong, which it wasn’t, and which she wouldn’t have cared about if it _was_ , she’d deal with it then.

He was lolling on the couch with his head draped back over the arm staring vacantly up at the ceiling when she walked into the penthouse. “So what _was_ that, yesterday?” Chloe said coolly, and then she noticed _the fucking drug kit_ out on the coffee table, half a dozen syringes scattered around, plastic tubing— “Oh my _God_ , are you doing _heroin?_ ”

“Detective Decker, on the case as always,” he said, with a muzzy wave of his hand. He laughed suddenly, an awful jangling noise. “It just occurred to me—Penelope Decker. It’s a stage name, of course. Your mother’s Jewish, isn’t she?”

“What?” Chloe said, too busy being horrified. “She—yes, her real name’s Yael Nachman. Lucifer, what are you _thinking_ —”

He laughed again. “And she is undoubtedly of the house of David. Tell me,” and he swung his legs over and stood up suddenly in one smooth move, all the high draining straight out of his eyes just that fast, his pinprick pupils widening back up, oddly red inside. “Tell me, _Detective_ _Decker_ , that it never occurred to you, once you knew who I was, that there might have been anything worth mentioning about the circumstances of dear Trixie’s birth?”

A cloud had gone over the sun outside. She stared at him blankly. He kept staring back at her, challenging, like he expected her to—to look guilty or something, as if there was some secret she’d been keeping—

 _I don’t know what you’re talking about_ , she wanted to say, and she _didn’t_ , she didn’t know, but the words didn’t want to come out, as if she _should_ have known, as if— _Once you knew who I was,_ and there was a shadow spreading like ink over the whole room, and his eyes were glowing redly, and there was something terrible and _familiar_ about his presence, something she didn’t want to remember, didn’t _want_ to know.

“Tell me, who did He send?” Lucifer said. “Gabriel again, or did He switch it up for Metatron this time? Don’t tell me that you _don’t remember_ , don’t you _dare_ tell me you haven’t had it in your heart every minute of every day since the moment you conceived, the truth of what your daughter is.”

She whispered, “I—I don’t— _every_ mom, every parent thinks—”

“ _Every_ parent? Oh, no, darling,” Lucifer said, savagely. “Not _every_ parent. _I_ don’t get to enjoy the charming delusion that my son will thrive, and be happy, and grow up to save the world. _My_ son was made to be the fucking _scapegoat!_ To be thrown down into the lake of fire by Christ risen again, and _you’ve known all along it was going to be—_ ”

His voice was going terrible and wrong, like there were a hundred people talking at once in different keys and somehow in harmony anyway, a voice that didn’t belong to anything human, a voice like— “Stop it!” Chloe yelled at him, pressing her hands to her temples. “ _Stop_ it, I didn’t, I don’t—” There were tears leaking out of the corners of her squeezed-shut eyes, running down the sides of her clenched face, because she did; she remembered: _hail, full of grace, the Lord is with you_ , and she’d said _please not me, not my little girl,_ because she’d somehow already known Trixie even in the dream, and the angel had ignored her and said _your child will live and reign in glory forever_ —

She’d thought it was a dream. When she found out about the pregnancy, she’d still thought it was a dream, a weird horrible miserable dream of being raped by God, her brain filling in the blanks of a night she’d lost: still so fucking unhappy about her father, she’d gone out for a drink and she’d gotten rohypnoled and pregnant, and she’d married Dan, the good guy who’d never— But none of that was true. What was true was the angel standing cold and stern over her, an unbearable glow of white light—

“Oh, God,” she said, her voice breaking, covering her mouth. “What did he _do_ to me,” and Lucifer stood motionless, staring at her, his face twisted with rage and still somehow radiant, too-beautiful, and then his mouth spasmed and he took a step towards her, the horrible light fading out of him. When he said, “ _Chloe_ ,” it was in his ordinary human voice, and she buried her face against his chest and sobbed as he put his arms around her.

#

Chloe was shaking in his arms, and he couldn’t find any words to comfort her. He’d been howling at her in his own despair, hoping to make her flinch; he’d wanted her to feel the sting of guilt, at least, when she climbed to that shining celestial throne over the wreck of his heart. It had never occurred to him that she hadn’t wanted it _._ That Dan had been telling the truth, of all horrible things.

It shouldn’t have surprised him, after everything—after _Damien_ , for fuck’s sake. It wasn’t as though dear old Dad had ever particularly cared about what anyone else wanted. But somehow it did, another cold sickening wave of incomprehension. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “Oh, my darling, I’m so sorry.”

And then Chloe pulled free and wiped her face with both hands and looked up at him incandescent with rage. “This is _not_ happening to my daughter. He can’t have her. I won’t let him. I _won’t_. Lucifer, you can’t tell me you were planning to _go along_ with this!”

He stared down at her. “No,” he said blankly. “No.” He hadn’t had anything like a plan.

“Well? What are we going to _do?_ ” Chloe demanded. “I’m not letting him put Trixie on a fucking cross! _Lucifer!_ ”

She thumped a fist against his chest, and his heart lurched with something astonishingly like gratitude. He caught her face in his hands. “Let me kiss you,” he blurted, and perhaps he hadn’t been such a ridiculous fool after all, if he’d fallen in love with a mortal brave enough to spit in God’s all-seeing eye, who’d storm the gates of Heaven with him if they had to. “ _Please_ , darling, can I—” and her face crumpled and she grabbed his head and pulled him down to her lips.

# End

**Author's Note:**

> With many thanks to rivkat and Speranza for beta! All feedback loved! If you like, [reblog](http://astolat.tumblr.com/post/143592361573/whosoever-believeth-8780-words-by-astolat)! 
> 
> PS: I would love it if anyone else felt like writing Damien/Lucifer fic either in this 'verse or others. And if anyone made me the "Brady Bunch" style manip of the happy blended family I would be super happy. :D

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Miracle](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6701239) by [buhnebeest](https://archiveofourown.org/users/buhnebeest/pseuds/buhnebeest)
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